Allan Ramsay

by William Henry Oliphant Smeaton

To define pastoral poetry, as Ramsay understood it, without at the same time citing examples lying to hand in the works of our author, is a somewhat difficult task. But as reasons of space will not permit us to duplicate extracts, and as it is proposed to relegate all criticism to the closing chapters of the book, we shall, at present, only glance in passing at the great principles of composition Ramsay kept in view while writing his pastoral.

In the Guardian, Addison has stated, with his wonted lucidity and perspicuity, those mechanical rules to which, in his idea, the type of poetry termed 'pastoral' should conform. He maintained it should be a reflection, more or less faithful, of the manners of men 'before they were formed into large societies, cities built, or communities established, where plenty begot pleasure.' In other words, that 'an imaginary Golden Age should be evolved by each poet out of his inner consciousness.' Then the Ursa Major of criticism, Dr. Johnson, after growling at all preceding critics on the subject, and remarking that 'the rustic poems of Theocritus and the eclogues of Virgil precluded in antiquity all imitation, until the weak productions of Nemesian and Calphurnius, in the Brazen Age of Latin literature,' proceeds to say: 'At the revival of learning in Italy it was soon discovered that a dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little difficulty, because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound or refined sentiment.' Rapin, in his De Carmine Pastorali, observes: ''Tis hard to give rules for that in which there have been none already given. Yet in this difficulty I will follow Aristotle's example, who, being to lay down rules concerning epics, proposed Homer as a pattern, from whom he deduced the whole art. So will I gather from Theocritus and Virgil, those fathers of pastoral, what I deliver on this account, their practice being rules in itself.' And Pope, in his Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, says: 'Since the instructions given for any art are to be delivered as that art is in perfection, they must of necessity be derived from those in whom it is acknowledged so to be. It is therefore from the practice of Theocritus and Virgil (the only undisputed authors of pastoral) that the critics have drawn the foregoing notions concerning it.' And Boileau, in his Art Poetique, after cautioning writers of pastoral against the introduction of bombast splendour or pomp on the one hand, and the use of low and mean language on the other, making shepherds converse comme on parle au village, observes that 'the path between the two extremes is very difficult'; while Dryden, in his preface to Virgil's Pastorals, defines pastoral to be 'the imitation of a shepherd considered under that character.' Finally, to quote Dr. Johnson once more, he remarks, in his Lives of the Poets, 'truth and exactness of imitation, to show the beauties without the grossness of country life, should be the aim of pastoral poetry.'

By all these critics pastoral poetry is considered in its abstract or ideal form. They never dreamed of bidding poets descend to the concrete, or to actual rural life, as Beattie puts it, 'there to study that life as they found it.' Dr. Pennecuik justly remarks, in his essay on Ramsay and Pastoral Poetry: 'Of the ancient fanciful division of the ages of the world into the golden, silver, brazen, and iron, the first, introduced by Saturn into Italy, has been appropriated to the shepherd state. Virgil added this conceit to his polished plagiarisms from Theocritus; and thus, as he advanced in elegance and majesty, receded from simplicity, nature, reality, and truth.'

To Ramsay's credit be it ascribed, that he broke away from these rank absurdities and false ideas of pastoral poetry, and dared to paint nature and rural life as he found it. His principles are thus stated by himself: 'The Scottish poet must paint his own country's scenes and his own country's life, if he would be true to his office.... The morning rises in the poet's description as she does in the Scottish horizon; we are not carried to Greece and Italy for a shade, a stream, or a breeze; the groves rise in our own valleys, the rivers flow from our own fountains, and the winds blow upon our own hills.'

To the fact that Ramsay has painted Scotland and Scottish rustics as they are, and has not gone to the hermaphrodite and sexless inhabitants of a mythical Golden Age for the characters of his great drama, the heart of every Scot can bear testimony. Neither Burns, supreme though his genius was over his predecessors, nor Scott, revelling as he did in patriotic sentiments as his dearest possession, can rival Ramsay in the absolute truth wherewith he has painted Scottish rustic life. He is at one and the same time the Teniers and the Claude of Scottish pastoral—the Teniers, in catching with subtle sympathetic insight the precise 'moments' and incidents in the life of his characters most suitable for representation; the Claude, for the almost photographic truth of his reproductions of Scottish scenery.

That Ramsay was influenced by the spirit of his age cannot be denied, but he was sufficiently strong, both intellectually and imaginatively, to yield to that influence only so far as it was helpful to him in the inspiration of his great work, but to resist it when it would have imposed the fetters of an absurd mannerism upon the 'machinery' and the 'atmosphere' of his pastoral. The last decades of the seventeenth, and the first two or three of the eighteenth centuries, were periods when pastoral poetry was in fashion. Italian and French literary modes were supreme. Modern pastoral may be said to have taken its rise in the Admetus of Boccaccio; in the introductory act of the Orfeo of Politian, written in 1475, and termed Pastorale, and in the Arcadia of Jacopo Sanazzara. But, according to Dr. Burney, the first complete pastoral drama prepared for the stage was the Sacrificio Favola Pastorale of Agostino de Beccari, afterwards published in Il Parnasso Italiano. They followed the Aminta of Tasso and the Filli di Sciro of Bonarelli in the beginning of the seventeenth century. In Italy and France, thereafter, pastoral became the literary mode for the time being; to Clement Marot, with his Complaint of Louise of Savoy, belonging the honour, as Professor Morley says, of producing the first French pastoral. It invaded all the fine arts,—music, painting, sculpture, romance, were all in turn conquered by it. From France it spread to England and to Scotland, and thereafter a flood of shepherds and shepherdesses, of Strephons and Chloes, of Damons, Phyllises, and Delias, spread over literature, of which the evidences in England are Spenser's Shepherds' Calendar, Sidney's Arcadia; and in Scotland, Robert Henryson's Robene and Makyne. Nor did Milton disdain this form for his Lycidas; Pope also affected it, as well as Ambrose Philips; while, under the title of The Shepherd's Week, Gay produced one of the most charming of his many charming works, in which our age, by consigning them to oblivion, has deliberately deprived itself of genuine poetic enjoyment. To the extent of the name, and of that only, was Ramsay influenced by his time. As regards all else he struck out a new line altogether.

With regard to the locale where Ramsay laid the scene of the drama, two places have laid claim to it; the first, and the least probable, being situate near Glencorse, about seven miles from Edinburgh; the second, one and a half miles from the village of Carlops, about twelve miles distant from the metropolis, and five farther on from the first-mentioned spot. The balance of probability lies strongly in favour of the Carlops 'scene.' In the first named, only the waterfall and one or two minor details can be identified as corresponding to the natural features of the scenery in the poem; in the second, every feature named by Ramsay is full in view. Here are 'the harbour-craig,' 'the trottin' burnie,' 'the little linn' making 'a singin' din,' 'the twa birks,' 'the pool breast-deep,' 'the washing-green,' 'the loan,' 'Glaud's onstead,' 'Symon's house,' 'the craigy bield,' 'Habbie's Howe' or house, and many others. Another strong point is that in Act ii. scene 2 of The Gentle Shepherd, Glaud threatens to set his biggest peat-stack on fire, through sheer joy over Sir William Worthy's prospective return. Around the Glencorse site for the action of the drama, there is not a peat to be dug in the whole parish; at the Carlops 'scene,' peat is the staple fuel of the district. Near by, also, is Newhall, the estate which in Ramsay's days was in possession of the Forbes family, who had purchased it from Dr. Pennecuik, the author of the Description of Tweeddale and other works. John Forbes of Newhall was one of Ramsay's dearest friends, and many relics of the poet are still preserved at the mansion house; but it was with the Pennecuik family Ramsay associated his poem. In The Gentle Shepherd, Sir William Worthy is described as having had to fly into exile—

'Our brave good master, wha sae wisely fled,
And left a fair estate to save his head;
Because, ye ken fu' weel, he bravely chose
To stand his liege's friend wi' great Montrose.'

Newhall was purchased by Dr. Pennecuik's father two years before Charles I. was beheaded. The doctor himself was contemporary with Cromwell, Montrose, Monk, and Charles II., all of whom appear so distinctly in the pastoral as associated with the action of the piece. He had to go into hiding during the Commonwealth, for his support of Charles I., and for sheltering Montrose after the battle of Philiphaugh. Pennecuik the younger (great-grandson of the doctor), in his Life of Ramsay, states that the poet appeared to have been indebted to Dr. Pennecuik for the Story of the Knight, but to have drawn the character from that of his friend Sir David Forbes.

The issue of the successive editions of The Gentle Shepherd, though occupying a large share of his time not engrossed by the cares of business, did not altogether preclude him from writing some fresh pieces when occasion arose. In 1727 appeared a 'Masque,' which was performed at the celebration of the nuptials of James, Duke of Hamilton, and the Lady Ann Cochrane. In this form of poetry Ramsay revived a good old type very popular amongst the Elizabethan poets and dramatists, and even descending down to the days of Milton, whose Masque of Comus is the noblest specimen of this kind of composition in modern literature. Ramsay's dramatis personæ are rather a motley crew, but on the whole he succeeds in managing the dialogue of his gods, and goddesses very creditably, though any admirer of his genius can see it moves on stilts under such circumstances. The Pastoral Epithalamium upon the marriage of George Lord Ramsay and Lady Jean Maule is of a less ambitious cast, both as regards form and thought; the consequence being, that the poet succeeds admirably in expressing the ideas proper to the occasion, when he was not bound by the fetters of an unfamiliar rhythm.